Titanium and other advanced aerospace materials are notoriously expensive and difficult to machine. By more effectively cooling the tool-chip interface, machining speeds and tool life can be increased, resulting in lower machining costs and faster production times. To this end, a rotary coolant adapter for conveying cryogenic fluids to a tooling system is useful in many applications, including the high-speed machining of titanium alloys, the high-speed machining of ceramic matrix composites, and the high-speed machining of aluminum metal matrix composites. Conveying cryogenic fluids to a tooling system allows the environmentally friendly machining of conventional materials without the use of cutting fluids.
Some cryogenically cooled rotary coolant adapters encounter high parasitic heating from the roller bearings when the entire assembly is cooled to cryogenic temperatures. As a result, roller bearing lifetimes are limited and cryogenic flow rates are reduced. It would accordingly be desirable to design a rotary coolant adapter in which the bearing elements of the rotary coolant adapter were thermally isolated from the cryogenic coolant.